Bilawal’s party Sikandar Ali Hullio Wednesday, April 09, - TopicsExpress

Bilawal’s party Sikandar Ali Hullio Wednesday, April 09, 2014 From Print Edition My latest article published in todays daily, The News, April 9, 2014 Bilawals party Sikandar Ali Hullio Every April 4 the death anniversary of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, founding chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, is ritualistically mourned at his ancestral graveyard, Garhi Khuda Bux, near Larkana. This year, on the 35th anniversary of Bhutto’s death, the PPP’s fourth – and youngest ever – chairperson, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, made several memorable remarks at the huge gathering. This makes him like and unlike – at the same time – with the legacy of both the senior Bhutto and Bilawal’s mother Benazir Bhutto. Bilawal took over the party after her assassination on December 27, 2007. In all this, he also carries another baggage of politics – inherited from his father, Asif Ali Zardari, which makes him more enigmatic, due to the several controversies around him (Zardari). More than six years back, when Bilawal was elevated to the top post of the PPP, he was young and in shock due to the tragic death of his mother. He lacked popular political acumen and the art of public speaking that mobilises the masses and influences people in popular politics. Over time, he has balanced his personal suffering, has more command over his speaking skills and broadened his horizon to look and comment upon the state of affairs within and outside country, either at any public gatherings or appearances or through his very active account on Twitter. However, in contrast to this much improved public posturing, his social media activities are largely not taken seriously. There are several contradictions between him and his father, combining both legacy and baggage together. Bilawal opposes talks with the Taliban. His father favours the engagement. Bilawal bitterly criticises Nawaz Sharif and his government. His father supports a thorough reconciliation policy. Bilawal prefers to be aggressive in his tone and manner. His father is defensive and calculated. Bilawal manages to distance allies and makes more foes. His father manages more allies – if not friends. Bilawal’s mother and grandfather took politics out of drawing rooms and to the masses. His father reversed politics back to the drawing rooms, circled by a select bunch of loyalists from his classmates to jailmates. As co-chairman of the PPP, Zardari, who often shuttles between Karachi and Dubai, mainly runs the affairs on his own or through his sister Faryal Talpur (who is also considered the de facto chief minister of Sindh). Bilawal speaks, creates vibes and makes headlines. His father and aunt make decisions and act accordingly. This makes Bilawal’s politics a combination of contrasts, as he carries both streams, making his politics enigmatic even at this very early stage. It was his grandfather, Bhutto, who took politics to the corridors of commoners, who were then also duly patronised by Benazir. Both met unnatural deaths. The orthodox establishment in our country is blamed for their untimely, tragic departures. Bhutto’s hanging on April 4, 1979 has been widely acknowledged as a judicial murder. The presidential reference on his case is pending with the Supreme Court for the past few years – waiting so that history is corrected. Benazir met a similar fate on December 27, 2007, through a bloody assassination – 20 years after Bhutto’s death in the same city, Rawalpindi. Her case is also lying with the courts. The findings of the investigations into her death clearly point to the same forces that led her father to the gallows, patronised by the same establishment. The electoral and numerical strength of Bilawal’s PPP has drastically reduced. His party currently governs a provincial government in its stronghold – Sindh – where the chief minister is believed to be a lame-duck. The provincial government has created a governance imbroglio that has resulted in famine in Thar to lawlessness from Karachi to Kashmore. This is the ninth clear mandate given by Sindh’s voters to the PPP since the 1970s. The PPP held Sindh’s provincial government five times – in 1970, 1988, 1996, 2008 and today in 2013. In the last elections, Bilawal’s party was virtually wiped out from rest of three provinces. However, his party holds leader of opposition positions in both Senate and the National Assembly. Bilawal’s party holds a clear majority – 42 – in the Senate while it has crumbled to just 43 in the National Assembly, followed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf which has emerged as the second largest party in the country. The PPP has been reduuced to number three in terms of total votes polled out. This is a challenge for the young leadership of the PPP, which is trying to create a new, vibrant force of voters. Bilawal’s PPP may lose half its senators in the upcoming senate election in March 2015, as the PML-N and its allies gain, achieving a clear majority at the upper house. This means that the only electoral upper hand of the PPP will be no more by this time next year, making it more challenging for the PPP chairman to regain the party’s lost electoral glory. In our typical political context, the voters and the masses constantly need to be mobilised to gain any such strength in the upcoming elections. After his recently scheduled and cancelled tip to Punjab, and after having almost abandoned Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, mass contact and mobilisation seem even harder; ignoring security alerts, though, can cost him his life like his mother. Meanwhile, support for the PPP is thinning across the federating units. Bilawal repeatedly attacks the Taliban, the PML-N and the PTI. He is also not on the same page with the nationalists, except the Awami National Party, which is also under attack in KP. Bilawal’s other ally – once a ‘kings party’ – the PML-Q is almost history. All this makes a very uncomfortable rather hostile environment for him and his party in the current spectrum of Pakistani politics. To regain strength, Bilawal needs to realign himself and his party with mainstream politics by not staying confined to just his native province. For this, he needs to make his own mark by adjusting with the possible realities of the country and shunning the practice of merely talking – or tweeting. He needs to learn the art of politics, which works through compromises. The writer, an anthropologist anddevelopment professional, is a freelance contributor based in Islamabad. Email: sikandarhullio@yahoo